by Tim Downs
“You mean women.”
“No. I mean your entire species.”
“What species is that?”
“Kingdom Animalia, phylum Chordata, and class Mammalia; of the order Primate, in the family Hominidae, genus Homo. The species would be sapiens.”
“I’m not a taxonomist, but isn’t that his species, too?”
“Not if you ask him.” He wiggled his fingers in the air as he stretched on a pair of bluish green latex gloves, then gently knelt by the yellow patch and laid down a wooden yardstick with one end positioned at the exact center of the open area. At that spot he began working his fingers deep into the dense thatch.
“What are you looking for?”
“I’m collecting leaf litter.” He lifted a handful of decomposing shreds of leaf, bark, and grass and dropped it into an open container. “When a body lies exposed in an open area like this, it is quickly inhabited by a series of arthropods—”
“I’ve heard this part. First come the momma flies, looking for nice neighborhoods with good schools. But because there’s no zoning, the whole place goes to pot and everyone moves out to the suburbs.”
Teddy smiled. “I see Nicholas has entrusted you with the technical version. Perhaps I can fill in a few details.” He measured twelve inches out from the site of his first collection and repeated the sifting and gathering process again. “When the egg of a blow fly or flesh fly hatches—about eight to ten hours after oviposition—a small larva emerges, perhaps only two or three millimeters in length. As that larva engorges itself on the decomposing tissues, it passes through three distinct phases of development, known as instars. About a week later—depending entirely on the specific species, of course—the third-instar larva ceases to feed and prepares to pupate into an adult fly. It begins to shrink in size, and its skin thickens and darkens into a puparial capsule—a sort of cocoon. Most importantly, the prepuparial larva becomes restless and wanders away from the corpse, seeking a protected site to await eclosion—emergence as a mature fly. Some of these late-instar larvae and puparia will drop off the body and hide in litter close to the ground surface. And those little vagabonds,” he said, gingerly depositing his third handful of humus, “are the ones we seek.”
“Can I do anything to help?”
Teddy looked up and studied her face thoughtfully.
“Really,” she assured him. “I’d like to do something.”
“I hope you understand—I thought it best to wait for you to ask.” Teddy handed her a magnifying glass and a pair of light tension larval forceps. “Your eyes are better than mine and certainly a lot better than Nicholas’s. Let’s put them to use.”
They both knelt down on all fours near the end of the yardstick. “What am I looking for?”
“Puparia. Tiny brown capsules about the size of a grain of rice.”
“Like we did at the funeral home.”
“This is a most important part of our investigation. The larvae Nicholas collected from the cadaver were in their third instar. Back at the lab he is attempting to rear those larvae to maturity under the same temperature and humidity conditions we find here. Some of those larvae are now beginning to pupate. We should find specimens here at a similar stage of development.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then the infestation of the body is at a more advanced state of development than the infestation of the area where the body was discovered. That raises the possibility—only the possibility, mind you—that the body was placed here sometime after the time of death.”
Kathryn’s heart raced at the suggestion. “Dr. Polchak told me that the body was moved.”
“He told me that the leg was moved,” Teddy replied gently. “At this time, we are unable to account for that phenomenon. We must be very careful not to jump to conclusions. For now we must be content to do our homework.”
“How far do I have to look?”
“They do have the wanderlust, these little creatures. They may migrate as far as twenty feet away. But concentrate on the circle defined by the yardstick. If there are any puparia to be found, they will probably be found there.”
Kathryn began her search with gusto, moving quickly through the crumpled grass. She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up into Teddy’s face.
“Slowly, and very carefully.” He patted her shoulder. “We must be careful to see what we see, not what we wish to see.”
Kathryn started her work again, reluctantly returning to the place where her search began, carefully separating the twisted blades of grass. She felt like a woman doing a self-examination, searching diligently for any telltale lump or bump while at the same time praying that she would find none. If she found no puparia, that meant Jimmy’s body might have been moved. If his body had been moved, then someone else was involved—someone who might have done more than just move the body.
Teddy began to dig small core samples of soil at one-foot intervals along the yardstick and sealed each one in a one-liter cylindrical container.
“Some carrion feeders are burrowers,” he explained. “We must look a few inches beneath the soil as well.”
Suddenly Kathryn’s heart sank. There, lying atop the moldy remains of a red maple leaf, was an unmistakable puparium. Teddy followed her eyes.
“As I expected,” he said, “as it should be. Is the capsule completely enclosed, or is a cap missing from one end, sort of like an open medicine capsule?”
“It’s closed.”
“Light in color, or dark?”
“Light brown.”
“Then it’s a young pupa. A very important discovery. Place him in here.” He handed her a small plastic vial.
Kathryn returned to her search with greatly diminished enthusiasm. What was the point? The larvae on the ground were apparently at the same stage of development as those taken from the body. Perhaps the body had not been moved after all. Perhaps the coloration of Jimmy’s leg was just some unexplainable anomaly. Perhaps all this was a waste of time … and money.
Teddy seemed to sense her change in mood. “Did you know,” he said cheerfully, “that there may be more than thirty million insect species in the world? Far more than all other species combined—and only about a million have been described and classified so far.”
“That’s great news,” Kathryn murmured.
“Dr. Polchak has studied hundreds of them. He loves to investigate an unfamiliar species—any unfamiliar species. And to do so, he believes that he must remain objective. And how can one be objective if one is a part of the very species he hopes to explore? I believe that is why Nicholas has left our species.”
Kathryn looked up. “You’re joking.”
“Oh, he would admit to being Animalia and to having a backbone—and he’s a chordate all right. If he was nursed by his mother, then he certainly can’t deny being a mammal. I think he would admit to being a primate—and who knows? On a good day, he might even admit to a common family and genus. But I’m afraid that’s where it stops. Nicholas is a man in search of a species.”
“I didn’t know you could resign from your species.”
“Technically you can’t, of course. But you can refuse to participate. Yes, that’s a very good way to put it. Nicholas has decided that he would rather study our species from outside, as an impartial observer.”
“Why? Who hurt him?”
Teddy paused. “Suffice it to say that Nicholas has encountered a number of difficult people in his past. And to be honest, this business tends to acquaint one with the more barbarous tendencies of the human species. Somewhere along the line, Nicholas decided he had more in common with the insect world—and so he has turned the tables on us. Now he holds the magnifying glass, and we are in the terrarium. He studies people; he examines them.” He let out a sigh. “Personally, I find that it’s much more pleasant if you actually get to know someone.”
Kathryn watched this tiny, gentle little man as he worked. The few strands of chestnut hair assigned the duty of coveri
ng his balding pate drifted helplessly in the wind, fluttering in rhythm with the yellow police line behind him. His round spectacles continually slid down his nose as he worked on all fours, causing him to pause every few moments and nudge them back into place with the back of his hand. He was an altogether harmless and likeable little fellow. How strange it was to find two men, good friends, both drawn to the same esoteric field of study and yet so completely opposite in nature. One tall, one short; one blind, one seeing; one cold, one caring. Maybe there was something to what Dr. Polchak believed. Maybe they were not the same species …
Securing the lid on the last of his samples, Teddy inserted the long probe into the ground near the center of the yellow patch and noted the soil temperature in his logbook. He then picked up the eighteen-inch sweep net and stood motionless, his eyes darting from side to side as if tracking the movement of the wind itself. In one fluid and remarkably graceful motion he swept the net downward and to the left, followed by a sudden upturn that flipped the long tip of the net up and over the metal ring. It was a simple action, something a child could do, but Kathryn thought that he somehow imbued the motion with the mystery and beauty of a fly fisherman’s cast. With his left hand he seized the net just below the tip, quickly twisting and trapping its tiny victims inside. With his free hand he opened a wide-mouth Ball jar, empty except for a half-dozen cotton balls in the bottom. He placed the tip of the net inside and quickly sealed the jar again.
“Ethyl acetate,” he explained. “It’s a killing jar, if you’ll pardon the expression. In about two minutes we can transfer them to alcohol.”
“What are they?”
“Blow flies. Mostly Calliphora vomitoria, I would guess—they’re very common in rural areas and one of the first to arrive after death. We will examine them to determine their species.”
“Why?”
“The larvae back at the lab are being reared to maturity for two reasons. First, by determining exactly how long it takes them to reach adulthood, we can work backwards and determine a very precise time of death.”
“How can you tell that?”
“Suppose it takes seven days for our specimens to emerge from their puparia. And suppose we know from past studies that this species requires exactly fifteen days between oviposition and final eclosion—to develop from an egg to a mature fly. If we note the exact moment the adult flies emerge from their puparia and count backward fifteen days, we would know the exact time of death. And we would also know the postmortem interval—the amount of time between the moment of death and the discovery of the body.”
“How does that help us?”
“It may not. But there is a second reason we are rearing those larvae to maturity. It’s very difficult—sometimes quite impossible—to identify the species of a fly while it’s still in its larval form. There are ways to tell—but to be certain, you must wait until adulthood, when species becomes obvious. In this case there seems to be no dispute over the time of death—but the possibility has been raised that the body was moved sometime after death.”
He held up the killing jar and tipped it from side to side. A small pile of lifeless black dots lay huddled at the tip of the soft, gray netting.
“These mature flies will tell us what species we should expect to find when our larvae mature. If there are any surprises—and especially if we find any species not indigenous to this area—then our suspicions will be confirmed. We will know that the body was moved. We may even be able to identify the actual place of death.”
Kathryn’s eyes betrayed the glimmer of hope she felt. “I’m not promising,” he reminded her, “but one can never tell. We’re not finished yet.”
Teddy repeated the sweeping motion three more times, each time exposing the specimens to the deadly ethyl acetate, then emptying the contents into a vial of isopropyl alcohol. One group was deposited into an empty vial—“For dry mounting later,” he explained.
Down on his knees again, he searched among the blades of grass for other living specimens.
Suddenly Kathryn sensed the hiss of compressed air. The black valise by Teddy’s side exploded inward and then spiraled up into the air, dropping again a few feet away. An instant later a faint cracking sound echoed past them from the distant woods.
Teddy straightened and reached out for the shattered valise, its back panel blasted outward in curling strips of black sheet metal.
“The case … my specimens … what—?”
Kathryn lunged for Teddy, knocking him flat. She lay stretched across his body, pinning him to the ground.
“Teddy, stay down! Someone’s shooting at us!”
Nick snapped the lens cap back on his Nikon, then bent down and shook the leafy green milkweed. Hundreds of tiny black dots rolled off and disappeared into the grass around the decomposing body. They were teneral blow flies, young adults whose wings were still too moist and fragile to allow them to fly. It was a lucky find; they only remain in this transitional state for a few short hours and are seldom photographed. But despite Dr. Ellison’s warning back at NC State, Nick’s mind was no longer on theoretical research—it was on applied science.
He looked up to see Teddy and Kathryn hurrying toward him from the parking lot. He met them in the middle of the meadow, not far from his alabaster beehive.
“You’re late,” Nick said, shoving the camera into his knapsack.
Without a word, Kathryn dropped the shattered valise on the ground before him.
“That was careless,” he said. “Equipment is expensive, you know.”
“Someone tried to kill us,” Kathryn said.
Nick turned to Teddy.
“It is possible.” Teddy nodded. “This damage was done by a bullet, fired from some distance away.”
Nick knelt down and examined the case. “What about the specimens?”
Kathryn’s mouth dropped open. “Did you hear what I said? Someone tried to kill us!”
“No one tried to kill anyone, Mrs. Guilford.”
“How do you know that?”
“Where did the shot come from? How far away were the woods from your location?”
“A good hundred meters,” Teddy said.
“And how far was the case from you when it was hit?”
“Maybe ten feet away,” Kathryn said, “on the ground.”
“So someone fires at you from a hundred meters and misses you by ten feet? That’s pretty bad shooting, Mrs. Guilford. If he wanted to kill you he could have come a lot closer than that. And isn’t it coincidental that the bullet would strike the case? What was he shooting at, your ankles? Someone wanted to frighten you, that’s all. Now what about the specimens?”
“We were able to replace most of them,” Teddy said. “That’s why we were late. We had to—”
“Wait a minute!” Kathryn broke in. “Is that it? Someone fired a gun at us! Whether they were trying to kill us or just scare us, what difference does it make?”
Nick raised his glasses just enough to rub his temples in slow circles. “Mrs. Guilford,” he said, “what do you want us to do? Did you get a license plate number? Did you get a description? Did you see a car, a truck—anything at all?”
Kathryn said nothing.
“Then all we know is that someone doesn’t want us to continue this investigation. Now there’s a surprise. The best thing we can do right now is press ahead with the investigation. Time is critical in our discipline, Mrs. Guilford—so why don’t you tell me what you and Teddy learned today?”
Kathryn glowered in silence. “First of all,” she began slowly, “you were wrong. There was nothing to hold up the leg.”
Even before she finished the sentence Nick began to shake his head. “I didn’t ask what you believe, Mrs. Guilford. Tell me what you know.”
She stopped and reconsidered her choice of words. “We know that there was nothing at the death scene to explain how the leg could have been supported.” She paused. “If there was something that once held the knee erect, it must have been
removed at a later time.”
“Very good, Mrs. Guilford. And if there was such an object, who could have moved it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the two boys, when they took away the body to the funeral home.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because the object would have been there when the sheriff viewed the body earlier, and he said he found the body flat.”
“Then who else?”
“Think.”
“Wait … how about the hunters who discovered the body?”
“Of course.”
“But why would they move the object?”
“Perhaps to make the body more comfortable.”
Kathryn blinked twice.
“It’s a common phenomenon at death scenes—and a great nuisance to investigators. A passerby finds a body sprawled out on the ground, let’s say with one arm bent behind its back. The passerby says to himself, ‘That’s got to hurt,’ and he helps the poor stiff out by making him more comfortable—and possibly ruins the investigation in the process.”
“So Denny or Ronny or Wayne might have rearranged Jimmy’s body to make him more comfortable?”
“It happens.”
“You’re only telling me what can happen,” Kathryn said, “not what did happen. How can we know if they really did reposition the body?”
“We can’t. That is, unless we ask them.”
“Someone must have moved the body before it was found in the woods. Maybe that someone was responsible for Jimmy’s death. Maybe the murderer.”
“It’s possible,” Nick conceded. “But there is another possibility you’ve overlooked.” He paused. “The sheriff could have moved the body.”
“But he said he didn’t.”
“Yes.” Nick looked directly at her. “That’s what he said.”
They turned at the sound of a car crunching to a stop in the gravel fifty yards behind them. A moment later the dust settled to reveal the sheriff’s black-and-white Crown Victoria. The door opened and the sheriff emerged. The obedient deputy was not far behind, carefully adjusting his hat as he straightened his massive body. The sheriff was out of uniform; he wore blue jeans, boots, and a tight navy T-shirt that emphasized the leanness of his six-foot-two-inch frame. He slipped on his Ray-Bans, and they started across the meadow.